Connecting with nature every day

garden wildlife

I was a bit demotivated today, but E, left to his own devices in the garden, dug out the soil from my Bay Tree pot with a stick. To distract him from this, I searched the garden for wildlife. We found numerous Slugs, Woodlice, Worms and Garden Snails. Unfortunately, Izzy couldn’t be persuaded to join in, though.

We read the Nature Project Book, which is a book I have had since childhood, in the garden and practised using the key in it to identify a Woodlouse, Fly, Slug and Moth. Izzy sketched a House Sparrow, which morphed into a ‘Princess Bird’. She also used her glue gun to stick a load of previously-collected, random, natural materials together to make a ‘bug hotel’.

Later, we went to the beach for an ice-cream. The sea was rough and we enjoyed feeling the spray from the waves hitting our faces.

B woke Izzy at 1am to lie out in the hammock and watch the Perseid meteor shower, whilst I stayed in bed with E. It was a clear night and Izzy stayed awake long enough to spot half a dozen shooting stars. She told me all about it in great detail in the morning.

Later, we visited friends at their holiday cottage in Kilmington and had a picnic dinner in the garden, where there was a pond with Dragonflies and Water Boatmen. The kids stayed up way past their bedtime and were delighted to see the moon make an appearance. Jackdaws and Rooks flew home to roost overhead as the sky darkened and just as we were about to return home, we saw a bat.

Total wild time – 30 mins watching meteoroids (Izzy) and 3 hours having a picnic (Izzy and E).

We spent some time searching for wildlife in the garden and found some of our regulars – Garden Snails and Pill Woodlice. We wondered whether a mouse was living in the hole in our lawn and watched the House Sparrows splashing in the bird bath.

We picked some blackberries on the way home from holiday club and then pottered around the garden for a bit, looking under pots to see what we could find, which turned out to be woodlice, snails, slugs and a centipede.

Izzy wanted to go bug hunting in the garden again today, so I let her and E loose with collecting jars and magnifying glasses. The highlight of the search was a Seven-spot Ladybird. The hunt turned into a rain dance and then descended into fighting over the pink, unicorn-adorned umbrella.

Later, whilst walking the dog, I picked a few elderflowers (not ideal weather for it, but hey ho) and for pudding we had Elderflower Scotch Pancakes (from a recipe in the Forager’s Kitchen), which B, E and I loved, but Izzy didn’t like (but then, she doesn’t really like any food unless it is in ice-cream form).

Izzy and E captured minibeasts from the garden in collecting jars and then we examined them under the digital microscope (a Veho VMS-004 400x USB microscope to be precise). We looked at a Two-spot Ladybird, a Pill Woodlouse, a feather, an ant, a couple of snails and various plants. I think they probably enjoyed the hunt more than seeing things in close-up, but it kept them amused for almost an hour, before E got tired and we had to call it a day.